Untested rape kits in an evidence room from I Am Evidence.
Photograph: HBO

With more than 225,000 untested rape kits found shelved, untested in police stations, survivors find themselves waiting for justice decades after an attack that they spend lifetimes trying not to think about.

HBO’s new documentary, I Am Evidence, brings these issues to the surface with the stories of four sexual assault survivors and the flimsy system built to respond to them.

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“To discard people’s experiences and their need for care and the need for justice was just so upsetting and we immediately wanted to go into overdrive to tell this story,” said Trish Adlesic, who directed the documentary with Geeta Gandbhir.

The attacks on the four women who form the center of the documentary all occurred more than a decade ago, but the incidents are still fresh thanks in large part to lethargy in the criminal justice system.

Danielle, who was raped in 1997, holds her baby while recounting the rape she has put in the background for nearly 20 years, explaining to an investigator that her attacker told her: “If you don’t shut up, I’ll beat your ass.” When the investigator brings out a photograph lineup of potential suspects, she picks the attacker out instantly.

Then she learns that while his DNA has been tied to two other rapes, he is not yet in police custody.

The systemic apathy towards testing these kits, paired with surveillance footage of other attacks and one particularly frustrating scene of a woman being questioned in a courtroom about what she was wearing when she was attacked, underlines that this crisis developed because of how society sees women.

Several people explain that had the system worked as it should, the rape of one of the women featured in the documentary, Amberley, would have been prevented.

In 1998, Amberley was abducted and raped in Ohio, two years after the same rapist raped and abducted a 17-year-old in California who had immediately had a rape kit done.

Michelle Brettin, the retired Ohio police officer who investigated Amberley’s case, said if every rape kit in the country were tested, she expected the DNA from Amberley’s rapist would turn up in other cases. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they found a body attached to it,” Brettin said.

Despite the overwhelming nature of the problem, which sees someone in the US sexually assaulted every 98 seconds, the women interviewed cut an inspiring image of resilience and bravery.

“The film is really dedicated to the people most affected by the issue, which is the survivors,” said Adlesic. “We’re here to help change this but we really wanted their voice to be the voice of the film, and it is.”

Adlesic produced the documentary with Mariska Hargitay, who played Olivia Benson on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a character who advocated for survivors and had herself been sexually assaulted.

Hargitay is an advocate for sexual assault victims in part because people would write to her about their abuse stories after seeing Law & Order. “At first it was a few, then it was more, then it was hundreds, then it was thousands,” she says in the documentary.

Viewers see another glimmer of hope in Ohio, where officials have acknowledged their failure to test kits and are seen working to improve the entire system, not just clear out the untested kits.

“For every story, there is hope to it because it was what was organically happening on the ground,” said Gandbhir.

She explained that they had interviewed 14 survivors for the film, but decided to focus on four women in the editing process, using their stories to also explain what was happening in the three states featured in the film: California, Ohio and Michigan.

“We would have loved to feature every single person because every single story could have been its own movie,” said Gandbhir.

The documentarians have also created an infrastructure around the film to encourage people to check on their local rape kit backlogs.

Because of the momentum around clearing the backlogs, and improving how the criminal justice system responds to these crimes, hundreds of watch parties are being held across the US for the documentary premiere on 16 April.

One of those parties is being held in Detroit by a key figure in the film, Ericka Murria. She said a party meant for just her family has swelled to include 700 guests.

Murria reveals in the documentary that until agreeing to appear in the film, she had for 12 years kept secret that she was raped on her 21st birthday.

Murria inspired the documentary’s title when she explained in an interview what it meant to have the rape kit sitting untested in an office for more than a decade.

Murria said: “I am evidence, literally. My name is on a box, on a shelf that’s never been tested.”

I Am Evidence will premiere on HBO on 16 April with a UK date yet to be announced